Statement from the Open Library of Humanities on allegations of generative AI misuse in ‘Legibility and Contestability: Opaque Power, Misattribution, and Fascist Closure’ (McHugh, Political Philosophy, 2026)
Posted by The Open Library of Humanities on 2026-08-26
The Open Library of Humanities (OLH) received a complaint on 19th August 2026 with regard to an article that was recently published in Political Philosophy, ‘Legibility and Contestability: Opaque Power, Misattribution, and Fascist Closure’ (McHugh, 2026). The complainant provided an alleged generative AI detection report which stated that generative artificial intelligence had been used to write a significant amount of the article and that this would therefore constitute substantial and undisclosed AI use.
The OLH conducted an investigation into this matter following its ‘complaints and appeals process’, which follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidance. This investigation included an in-depth analysis of the article, such as reviewing a similarity report of the article’s manuscript for provable instances of plagiarism, incorrect references and citations, and a thorough review of all parts of the editorial workflow of the article in the journal.
The investigation found no issues with the content of the article that would suggest any academic malpractice was committed, nor does the OLH have any reason to believe that generative AI was used to the extent that the complainant suggested, or with the intent to commit academic malpractice. There was no reason for the OLH to believe that the article’s editorial processes were handled improperly by the editors, the reviewers, or by the author; there was thorough human oversight by peer reviewers and editors throughout. In line with the OLH’s ‘Artificial Intelligence (AI) Policy’ on providing an ‘AI Declaration Statement’, the author did not meet the criteria set out within the policy to provide a public declaration statement, namely: ‘the use of generative AI that forms the basis of a specific research purpose’, ‘the use of generative AI that forms the basis of a controlled simulation that produces outputs, such as synthetic data to supplement partial datasets, which informs the article's argument(s)’, or ‘the use of generative AI for specific demonstrative purposes, with generated output(s) quoted and cited clearly with the prompts used, the model version and the URL of the service as part of its citation or caption’.
Following COPE advice on ‘Handling an Article Produced by AI’, the OLH agrees with COPE’s statement that: ‘The current status of AI detection software means that it is not sensible to apply a threshold approach. Sometimes text written by a human can be flagged as produced by AI if it uses very specific language and phrases, and AI indicators are still inconsistent enough that their output cannot be relied upon; they can both under-predict and over-predict AI usage’. The OLH does not believe that generative AI detection software and reports generated from such software are necessarily accurate or objectively provable evidence of AI generated writing.
With the above taken into account, we have concluded that there are no verifiable issues found that provide or support accusations of AI misuse or malpractice. Therefore, the OLH and Political Philosophy will not be pursuing the complaint further and will not require any further action to be taken with this article.
The Open Library of Humanities